Befitting a ball club of a certain age, the Yankees have on their roster more Hall of Fame candidates than MVP candidates. Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Joe Torre – each one will ultimately deserve, at the very least, consideration for a plaque. Ironically, though, for a team that has made 10 straight postseason appearances and was until lately one of the greatest of all time, Joe Torre’s team may send just two players to Cooperstown wearing Yankee blue.

The Ruth-Gehrig Yankees of the 1920s, not nearly as dominant as the teams of the late 1990s, have five players and manager Miller Huggins on the wall in the Hall. The DiMaggio-era Yankees of the 1930s (excluding Gehrig, who overlaps the previous era) have four, plus manager Joe McCarthy. Casey Stengel’s Yankees of the 1950’s, who had more interchangeable parts than stars, have seen four players enshrined, as well as Stengel himself. The Yankees of the late 1970s, not quite equal to their predecessors, have Reggie Jackson in the Hall; someday, Goose Gossage may join him (Catfish Hunter’s enshrinement was four-fifths A’s, one-fifth Yankees).

The current crop of Yankee Hall candidates is led by Torre, who has already done all he needs to do to qualify. If the manager steps down tomorrow after seeing one too many Womacks, he will still get his plaque by virtue of being one of five managers to win four championships (Stengel and Joe McCarthy won seven each; Connie Mack five, and Walter Alston four).

After Torre, the picture becomes hazy. Rodriguez is already a Hall of Famer, but as various Red Sox have pointed out, A-Rod is not yet a “true” Yankee; at this point, he’d be voted in for his achievements with Seattle and Texas. The same goes for Randy Johnson, who is one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but didn’t make it there in the Bronx. Sheffield is clearly a Hall of Fame talent, if not a Hall of Fame personality, but his Yankees phase is a coda to his career, not the main movement. All three will ultimately be inducted, but like Hall of Famers Home Run Baker, Joe Sewell, and Phil Niekro, the pinstripes will be footnoted.

Mussina, now in his fifth season with the Yankees, will likely finish his career with at least 250 wins (he currently has 219), and his career 3.60 ERA is terrific by the inflated standards of his day. Mussina has been nearly 30% below league average in ERA and saved about 300 runs over the average pitcher. He’s finished in the top 10 in ERA nine times without actually winning it.

Brown’s case is similar, but stronger. He will finish with fewer wins than Mussina – the 40-year-old has 211 – but Brown’s 3.25 career ERA is also a dominating 30% below his leagues. He has two ERA titles, a 21-win season, and a championship ring.

For both Mussina and Brown, a trip to the Hall will depend on whether the Baseball Writers’ Association of America voters are ready to acknowledge that wins are not necessarily a reflection of pitching effectiveness. Among active pitchers with over 1,000 innings pitched, Brown ranks eighth in adjusted ERA, Mussina ninth. They stand close behind four inner-circle Hall of Famers – Pedro Martinez, Johnson, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux – as well as John Franco, Tim Hudson, and Curt Schilling. This is a truer measurement of their abilities.

Of the dynastic Yankees, Rivera and Jeter have made the strongest cases. Though there is nary a Cy Young or MVP award between them (and their chances of ever winning one diminish by the day), each will be a virtual shoo-in based on strong career accomplishments as well as a winning mystique.

Williams should go in before Jeter and Rivera but probably won’t. Players like Williams, who do many things well, have a tough time getting recognition from the voters; one 40-homer campaign nets more respect than Williams’s career of varied accomplishments. But Bernie was, with Jeter and Rivera, the enabling piece of the dynasty, the player who gave the Yankees such a pronounced advantage over the opposition that they not only won but dominated. Such is the value of center fielders who are top offensive contributors.

Williams may not boast any neon-lighted home run and RBI titles, but from 1995 through 2002, he was worth 72 wins above replacement to the Yankees. Among center fielders, only a few players – Mays, Mantle, and DiMaggio among them – have been more valuable over such a sustained stretch, and Williams was the most valuable center fielder in the game over that period. On the list of all-time center fielders, he ranks eighth in homers, seventh in RBI, and ninth in runs created.

Posada, the third of the up-the-middle stars that carried the dynastic Yankees, will almost certainly not make the Hall. His low batting averages (though not low among catchers – he ranks sixth among his colleagues from 1998 through 2004), high strikeout totals, and poor defensive reputation all obscure Posada’s excellent hitting. His .378 career on-base average ranks third among active catchers (behind Mike Piazza and Jason Kendall), and his .853 OPS is second only to Piazza’s. But given the late start to his career – Joe Girardi “tutored” Posada until 2000, when Posada was 29 – he will not compile the career numbers associated with the Hall.

The lack of obvious Hall of Famers among the “career” Torre Yankees suggests one of two things: Either you don’t need stars to build a dynasty, or we don’t know how to recognize a star when we see one. Conversely, the prevalence of Cooperstown candidates on a 2005 team struggling to beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays suggests that George Steinbrenner needs to rethink his formula for winning in this century.

Mr. Goldman is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.